Sunday 4 September 2005 10.45 EDT
First published on Sunday 4 September 2005 10.45 EDT

Perhaps because he has turned 40, Damien Hirst, the original Young British Artist, is putting the emphasis on British instead of Young. Having shocked purists by displaying a shark in formaldehyde and servicing his art with other dead and decaying animals, Hirst last week joined what once seemed a dying breed, the landed gentry. For those who recall the enfant terrible directing the video for the pop group Blur's No 1 hit 'Country House', which mocked rich city types who buy rural retreats, his acquisition of a £3 million Grade I-listed stately home may have the whiff of sell-out.

From the White Cube gallery in fashionably urban Hoxton, east London, it is a long way to Toddington Manor, a crumbling 300-room Gothic revival mansion - rumoured to be haunted by a 'ghostly presence' - set on a 124-acre estate in Gloucestershire. But while Hirst is an unlikely country squire, he is not alone in making such an improbable journey. American superstar Madonna, German model Claudia Schiffer and British actress Kate Winslet and her husband, Sam Mendes, are among those who have felt the ancient calling to find a country seat and declare themselves lord (or lady) of the manor.

'There's something about the English country house - tradition, status, stability,' said Penny Churchill, property correspondent of Country Life magazine. 'It's your chance to own a slice of England. Wherever you go in the world, it's seen as a statement, as the pinnacle of social standing. But listed buildings are incredibly expensive to maintain. It has to be a labour of love.'

Be careful what you wish for is sound advice. Hirst - reportedly worth more than £50 million - and anyone else who splashes out on a historic pile cannot expect to collect the keys from a PG Wodehouse character in tweeds and inherit a legion of butlers to keep their trophy house ticking over.

Toddington Manor has been deserted for 20 years and allowed to fall into disrepair. Its restoration will cost an estimated £10m and Hirst himself acknowledges that he faces a 'lifetime's work'. In addition, the annual repair bill for such properties can be at least £40,000, often forcing owners to sell works of art, heirlooms and land as well as opening to tourists.

Taking on a stately home can prove a poisoned chalice for those who lack the necessary enthusiasm, discipline and, above all, bank credit. 'You need to be persistent and dogged and a bit crazy as well,' said Sarah Callander Beckett, who owns the 870-year-old Combermere Abbey, remodelled as a Gothic house in 1,000 acres in Shropshire. 'You're looking at updating it to be in accordance with present-day preferences and actualities. Houses like this eat up huge quantities of cash and need substantial maintenance that normal homes won't need. They've been changed over the ages so they are complex and there are parts you can't see that need fixing. You have to be very forward thinking.'

When Callander Beckett inherited Combermere in 1992 it had fallen into such disrepair that she was forced to begin a 20-year restoration programme, and now needs to raise nearly £4m to renovate a derelict wing. She converted a stable block into holiday cottages, offers holistic treatments, and hires out rooms for weddings and corporate hospitality and the gardens for public events.

'It is amazingly hard work,' said the 53-year-old, who lives with her husband, Peter, and their nine-year-old son, Peregrine. She warned that prospective buyers could face unpleasant surprises.

'If they haven't lived in a building like that before, they probably aren't aware of all the pitfalls, which are mitigated by the hefty bank account they will undoubtedly have to draw on. They are probably unaware of the importance of the relationship with the community, who will have interacted with the house for a very long time and see it as part of their identity. This is going to be a challenge.'

Owners of such listed buildings, who are legally required to preserve them for the nation to the satisfaction of English Heritage, argue that they should receive state assistance in the form of tax relief. Francis Fulford - who still lives on an estate on the edge of Dartmoor granted to his ancestor by Richard the Lionheart eight centuries ago - said: 'It is a struggle and it always has been. People always think that a renovation means there's been a big grant, but nobody gets big grants these days. These are listed buildings and it's extraordinary that successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have refused to give help. All we ask is that when we carry out repairs for the good of the nation we don't pay VAT on them.'

Fulford, who runs a 50-room mansion and 3,000-acre estate and was featured last year on a TV documentary, The F***ing Fulfords, said that Hirst's purchase was cause for celebration after an era in which stately homes seemed to have been left behind.

'Twenty years ago nobody would have predicted that a rich person would have bought Toddington Manor. Instead of being written off as something for the National Trust or to be demolished, now it can find someone who'll take it on and run it, which is brilliant. We've had a remarkable revival.

'One of the reasons is that there's been an industrial revolution inside and outside: mowers, Hoovers, heating are cheaper and better now. They are the equivalents of servants: it's all been mechanised so you don't need a boy to turn the lights on any more, you just press an electric switch. Toddington can now be run with two or three staff, if that. Second, the tax on earnings isn't 90 per cent, it's 40 per cent. Once Damien Hirst would have had to go and live in Ireland, but now he can live here.'

Estate agents report that the top end of the market is booming, and there is no greater sign of the desirability of a stately home - authentically historic or imitation - than in Britain's new aristocracy: footballers. According to Country Life, about 20 prime country houses worth more than £2m each have been been sold in the north alone over the past two years.

Among the buyers was England striker Michael Owen, who spent £1.6m on the Elizabethan Grade II-listed Lower Soughton Hall in North Wales. Frenchman and Liverpool footballer Djibril Cisse bought a £2m house with a nine-acre estate in Cheshire which carried the historic title Lord of the Manor of Frodsham - then banned the local hunt from using its grounds. The trend most obviously began with David and Victoria Beckham, who in 1999 spent £2.5m on a seven-bedroom house in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, though 'Beckingham Palace' is only mock-Georgian.

Country Life found that 20 years ago the buyers tended to be captains of industry, merchant bankers or those who had inherited wealth, usually aged between 45 and 55. Today's buyers were more likely to be in their late 30s to early 40s or, in the footballers' case, younger still.

Richard Wilkin, director-general of the Historic Houses Association, said: 'About 20 to 30 years ago, nobody in their right mind who had made money thought about buying a house and estate - the cost of keeping them up was huge. It's now more fashionable and more frequent.

'By and large, the people who buy these are in for something more daunting than they realised, but generally they stick it out. It depends on how much money they have to keep it going: there are annual repairs, generational costs such as maintaining the stonework, the roof, the wiring and the cost of paying the cleaners and other staff. At a place like Toddington the annual repairs could be £40,000, possibly up to £100,000. Generational costs can be several million pounds. I suppose the cleaning bill will depend on how much Damien Hirst gets out there with his own brush.'

Hirst, who works from a studio in nearby Stroud, aims to turn Toddington Manor into a museum to hold his personal art collection. Adding to the maintenance burden, the building is festooned with gargoyles and grotesques staring from the walls, including monkeys playing lutes and banging drums and a gentleman with a severe Victorian moustache, incongruously dressed in a loincloth, holding up the mantelpiece. A sufficiently morbid aesthetic, then, to keep the new lord happy as he toils.

Celebrity gentry

Claudia SchifferColdham Hall, Stanningfield, Suffolk

The supermodel spent £5m on the Tudor mansion she shares with her producer husband, Matthew Vaughn. Built in the 1570s and known as a 'miniature Hampton Court', it was once owned by one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. Schiffer's time there has been plagued by stalkers, rows over access and the ghost of a 17th-century nun. Hiring five ex-Gurkhas seems to have dealt with the stalkers.

Kate WinsletChurch Westcote Manor, Westcote, Gloucestershire

Winslet and her husband, American Beauty director Sam Mendes, outbid Elizabeth Hurley to snag the Cotswolds property. The star couple paid £3.3 million for the 20-acre estate, £500,000 over the asking price. The property has been empty since the death of its previous owner, wildlife artist Raoul Millais. The mansion needs about £1.5m of repairs. Until the estate is up and running, Kate and Sam will reportedly be renting a one-bedroom cottage in the Cotswolds.

MadonnaAshcombe House, Tollard Royal, Wiltshire

The American superstar was smitten by the 18th-century, six-bedroom manor house when she first visited it, and immediately offered £10m for the 1,200-acre estate. Mrs R, as the household staff call her - an allusion to her film director husband, Guy Ritchie - recently posed in American Vogue as the lady of the manor. Clad in chiffon and cashmere, she was photographed feeding her hens from a porcelain bowl.